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Liberal arts education is to make people into good citizens, not into good workers. They are to acquaint you with the intellectual achievements of humankind. That is why we read the Iliad, why we watch a performance of Hamlet, why we learn about the history of ancient Greece, and, yes, why we study algebra.

We live in a technological society. Not learning algebra in the public school system means those kids will not be prepared, will not be qualified, to do anything in science and engineering. I’m serious: if you don’t know algebra, you can’t do basic quantitative chemistry, and if you can’t do that, you can’t do biology. At all. Not the molecular/biochemical/bench side, not the ecological/evolutionary/field side. You can’t do physics, that’s for sure. Forget math and statistics. If you’re not capable of grasping statistics, forget psychology, too.

I’ll go farther and hazard a guess that poli sci, like the other social sciences, is much more empirical and quantitative now than it was then and that Dr. Hacker would be hard put to earn a doctorate in his own field nowadays.

Economists have shown that cognitive skills–especially math and science–are robust predictors of individual income, of a country’s economic growth, and of the distribution of income within a country (e.g. Hanushek & Kimko, 2000; Hanushek & Woessmann, 2008).

A patient who understands graphs and inequalities will have a much better control of their health than someone who has trouble with even basic arithmetic. This is not a case of mathematics being a prerequisite for a job, the usual argument for numeracy. This is mathematics making a difference in your own health.

On that note, here’s commenter Ben: Is English literature necessary? I never ran into Moby Dick during my career. Is Gym class necessary? I never had to do a pull up. Is Physics necessary? When was I called upon to do vector analysis? Is Biology necessary? I think only French Chefs have to dissect frogs in their careers. It must be tough to teach. What’s the point. Walmart has all the stuff we’ll ever need. Supersize that happy meal. We’re just turning into a bunch of consumers anyway, lets just stop pretending that we need to know anything.

Few pre-college math teachers majored or even minored in math, and until more teachers do, improvements will be hard to come by. Ironically, it seems that people who have mastered “useless” algebra and other higher math topics tend to get jobs that pay more than middle school math teachers earn. I have the utmost respect for people with math degrees who choose to teach in spite of the poor pay and discipline problems, but few people make that choice. Math education needs help, but Hacker’s suggestions throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The advent of the Internet and the emergence of quantifiable data is making math skills critical to many white-collar professions; marketers and public relations staffers, for example, have to understand the arcane aspects of statistics in order to analyze data on ad campaigns, while reporters and editorialists need stronger math skills as well.

To say that we are failing and need to do something about it is absolutely correct. To say we need to remove it from our path as a hindrance rather than overcoming it with improved teaching methods, enhanced mathematics programs, and funding in general is a mistake.

When students say they have difficultly with algebra, that’s usually not the entire story. Typically, that means they have also trouble with arithmetic. There’s a reason why the ability to do long division is correlated with long-term mathematics performance: you have to master the basics.

My girlfriend is a fine artist, with an MFA in sculpting from a school . . . in New York City. Earlier this year, she was the recipient of a month-long artist residency in Taiwan where she put together an outdoor installation in knitted recycled plastic as part of an exhibit on environmental themes. She has a fairly high proficiency at math . . . and this gets used routinely in her career. She has to estimate volumes of complicated shapes she’s planning to put together, so as to procure materials . . . She has to do calculations with money so as to set budgets . . . She has to estimate time for projects that might last many months. At some point she generated a calculation for people, time, and material to cover the Eiffel Tower in tiny crocheted plastic leaves (a long-term goal).

Some people have questioned whether our students should be required to learn algebra. Andrew Hacker at the New York Times points out how many students struggle and fail algebra. The commenters, fortunately, point out all of his flawed logic. (Someone should summarize all of the great comments explaining why algebra should be required.)

Richard Cohen at the Washington Post makes the idiotic argument: “You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it.”

If I had never heard a poem or listened to a symphony or read a novel or visited Independence Hall, I could probably dumbly write that I don’t miss literature, music, or history…never heard of ‘em. Don’t need ‘em. Bugger all you eggheads pushing your useless ‘knowledge’ on me!

This reminds me of when I was student teaching. The supervisor of my student teaching supervisor, a supposedly educated man with a PhD, said: I never took Calculus and have never regretted it. There has never been a time when I wish I had learned calculus.

What an idiot! (Sorry for being rude but it’s true.) If you don’t know a subject, how do you know if you couldn’t use it?

Everyone is impacted by economics. As a discipline, economics is based in calculus. I remember being in a general-ed economics class and sitting through long convoluted verbal explanations of marginal something-or-other. I thought to myself, “It’s the derivative stupid!” They are simply describing the change in the something-or-other given a small change in the input. (Sorry I don’t remember the details.) If everyone in the room had learned calculus, we could have covered a 2 hour lecture in 30 minutes.

So when could you use calculus? Everywhere! If, and only if, you understand it. The same is true for algebra.

Update: I just read a post by Chad Orzel, also at scienceblogs, that calls bullshit on the acceptance of innumeracy by intellectuals.

Update II: I wrote this thinking all of the articles were recent. (They showed up today in my news reader and I know this is currently being discussed elsewhere.) It turns out they are up to 6 years old. So please forgive my use of present tense. All of the arguments are still valid. Note to self: Check the publication dates on articles sent by Zite…